


Step Sequence

by msmorland



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-24
Updated: 2018-03-24
Packaged: 2019-04-07 04:53:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14073300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/msmorland/pseuds/msmorland
Summary: Tessa didn’t need to see Scott’s face to know he was unhappy about the way she’d handled it.She’d known for days, feeling him tense beside her in interviews as she kept denying, denying, denying. They weren’t a couple, they weren’t dating, they were completely platonic business partners and were going to go their separate ways as soon as the Olympic fervor died down.





	Step Sequence

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time writing RPF, and I'm not sure how I feel about that. But I can't get these two out of my head, and especially not how sad Scott seemed (IMO, anyway) in interviews after Tessa denied they were a couple. So I wrote this little thing set after the Ellen appearance.
> 
> I don't know much about skating, so I went a bit vague and hand-wavey where that is concerned.

Tessa didn’t need to see Scott’s face to know he was unhappy about the way she’d handled it.

She’d known for days, feeling him tense beside her in interviews as she kept denying, denying, denying. They weren’t a couple, they weren’t dating, they were completely platonic business partners and were going to go their separate ways as soon as the Olympic fervor died down.

“I thought we agreed no lying, T,” Scott said now, looking at her across her LA hotel room. _Her_ room because she’d insisted on booking separate ones, even though they'd been whatever-they-were for a while now.

They had agreed. Tessa had rationalized it: They weren’t dating. They didn’t do the things normal people did when dating, when trying to get to know each other; the things both of them had done in other relationships. They already knew each other. They were just...together. It pervaded so much of their lives that there was no label to fit it.

“We aren’t lying,” Tessa said, but it sounded weak even to her.

“Separate _families_?” Scott said, incredulous. “Clear this up for me, T. I was on board with the whole ‘we don’t date the way other people date` thing, but how far are you gonna take this? Am I gonna have to pretend I live in a second house still when we have kids? Sneak in and out in the middle of the night?”

“No, of course not.” And it didn’t even give her pause anymore, when he said things like that. _When we have kids._

“Then what?” Scott asked. His voice was soft now. “I’m not angry. I get why you wanted it this way, and you weren’t wrong. We don’t owe anyone this”—waving his hand in the air between them—”and we’ve worked too hard for it not to do everything we can to protect it.”

Scott took a deep breath. “But who are we fooling, T?”

Tessa laughed and swiped at her eyes. No one. The _Ellen_ appearance had made that clear. They were fooling absolutely no one.

Scott threw himself across the bed on his back, his head landing near Tessa’s thigh. He mumbled something.

“What was that?” Tessa reached down to run her fingers through his hair.

Scott sighed. “I said...it’s hard enough for me to believe you want to be with me. Hearing you deny it to the world multiple times a week on TV doesn’t make it easier.”

Ah.

Tessa had known he felt this way about their skating career sometimes, no matter how often she denied it—that she was the source of their artistry, the compelling one, the one everyone wanted to sponsor and talk to, and he was the lesser half of the partnership. The muscle. The workhorse who somehow skated to multiple Olympic medals on her coattails. But she hadn't known, or hadn't wanted to know, that he felt this way about them off the ice.

He was so wrong.

“You know I would have quit a million times if it weren’t for you, right?” Tessa said, sitting down next to him. “Ballet school, and then when my legs—. I never really wanted to skate with anyone else. I wouldn’t have wanted to skate anymore if _you_ were anyone else. And I’ve never wanted this with anyone else, either. Retiring, starting a family? I can only picture it because you’re in the picture, Scott.”

She felt Scott exhale next to her, like he’d been holding his breath for a very long time, braced for her to say something else. To decide she wanted something else.

“I don’t want anything else,” she said, just to make it extra clear. She leaned down to kiss him.

It was a funny position, the opposite of the way they so often were on the ice, where he leaned down to meet her and supported her at the same time. Even with all the work they’d done on their partnership, it was still easy to sink into the familiar pose. To assume Scott would keep meeting her where she was.

Tessa pulled back, then stood up and held out a hand to pull him up, too. “Let’s go out for dinner,” she said.

Scott looked at her, startled. The whole let’s-not-be-seen-together-in-LA thing had been another one of her ideas. “You sure?”

“Yeah,” Tessa said.

It wasn’t an answer, exactly. They still needed to talk about what came next; about who they would tell, and how, and when. But Tessa could tell from the way Scott relaxed next to her that it was an answer for them, which was what they’d needed from the beginning.

“And Scotty?” She was still holding his hand. “I think you should cancel your room.”


End file.
